How do you translate the word “that” in Spanish? Let’s start with a simple sentence in English:
- “I believe that that is mine.”
Here’s the Spanish:
Notice how the English word “that” shows up twice, but in Spanish, it turns into two completely different words: que and eso. Why does this happen?
In English, the word “that” is used in a couple of very different ways. In Spanish, however, it has two completely separate translations! Once you understand the difference, choosing the right word becomes easy. In this guide, we’ll make this distinction so clear you’ll never confuse them again.
Watch the Guide: How to Say “That” in Spanish
In the video, I’ll walk you through why “that” splits into two different parts of speech — and I’ll give you a simple trick to always choose the right one.
When “That” is a Noun: Eso
Let’s start with the simplest translation of “that”, which is with eso.
When you think about the word “that” in English, you probably think about pointing at something and saying “that”. For example:
- I want that! → ¡Quiero eso!
Here’s another example:
- That is a good idea. → Eso es una buena idea.
Once again, we’re talking about some object or idea as if we’re pointing at it. In these cases, the word “that” is a pronoun, a word that behaves like a noun.
Before we dive into the other way to translate “that”, I’m going to give you a little trick I call the “food test”.
The idea is if you would use the word “that” in English, and if it would theoretically work to replace the word “that” with the word “food”, then the correct Spanish word is eso.
Let’s test it on this sentence:
When we use the word “that” here, it would work perfectly well to replace “that” with ”food” and say:
The Spanish version is:
Here’s another one:
We can replace “that” with “food”:
So the Spanish would be:
You might be wondering… why are we talking about food? This may seem silly, but now let’s try it with this next sentence:
- “He said that she was here.”
Let’s try to replace “that” with “food”:
- “He said food she was here.”
That doesn’t work at all — grammatically, this whole sentence falls apart. Therefore, we wouldn’t use the word eso here, because we’re using the word “that” in a totally different way.
We’ll get into that in the next section.
When “That” is a “Connector”: Que
The second way to translate “that” is with the word que.
Now you’re probably familiar with this word, but it’s also possible you know the word qué, with an accent mark, which means “what”. This word, que without an accent mark, is totally different: It means “that”, but specifically when we’re connecting two parts of a sentence together.
For example, let’s go back to the sentence that failed the food test just now.
- “He said that she was here.”
This sentence is basically two sentences stuck together: “he said” and “she was here.” The word “that” is connecting what “he said” to the message “she was here”.
In English, the purpose of the word “that” is not to point at something. Instead, it’s to connect two phrases together into one longer sentence. That’s exactly what que is for:
- He said que she was here.
So the whole sentence would be:
- El dijo que ella estaba aquí.
Let’s try another example:
- I told him that we are at home.
Again, we need to connect what I told him to the message itself.
- I told him que we are home.
- Le dije que estamos en casa.
This happens all the time, and it’s why the word que is the most frequently-used word in the Spanish language. In fact, according to an analysis of subtitles, the word que accounts for more than 3% of all words that Spanish speakers use.
If you find that surprising, that’s probably because you’re an English speaker, and you don’t realize that you have a very strange habit that Spanish speakers don’t have.
If you're wondering what the habit is, check out this sentence:
Look at this for a second. We’re connecting two phrases together, “I think” and “he’s here”. But the word “that” is missing! Now, of course, we could add it in:
- “I think that he’s here.”
This is where it gets interesting: In English, we often skip the word “that” as a connector. But in Spanish, you can’t ever skip saying que as a connector. So the Spanish sentence would include the que:
Here’s another typical example:
- She told me you were here.
In Spanish, you have to have the connector in there:
- She told me that you were here.
- She told me que you were here.
- Me dijo que estabas aquí.
So any time you’re connecting two phrases with two verbs, if it’s at all possible to connect them using the word “that” in English, you need to use que in Spanish.
Using Eso + Que Together
Now let’s look at sentences that use both que and eso. For example, let’s go back to the sentence we started with at the very beginning:
- “I believe that that is mine.”
The word “that” appears twice here because it has two different meanings. But can you tell which one should be eso? Let’s try the food test on each one.
- “I believe food that is mine.”
That sounds a bit weird. Let’s try the food test on the second one instead:
- “I believe that food is mine.”
The second “that” passes the food test. So that one is going to be eso:
- I believe that eso is mine.
And then we can tell that the first “that” is a connector, so it will be que:
- I believe que eso is mine.
So here’s the full sentence:
If this seems like a lot of work, don’t worry, it will become second nature over time. We've found with our coaching students that Spanish learners tend to master que and eso really quickly, and they never confuse them again after just a few weeks of practice.
Then Spanish gets more and more fun because you can focus on the richer pieces of the language, not just the word “that”. But it all starts with some active drilling on these core elements. Let’s practice with a quiz.
Quiz — Que or Eso? Or Both?
I’m going to share some English sentences, and you should try to figure out if the Spanish version should use que or eso.
1. “That is really nice.” → _____ es muy bueno.
2. He said that he was here. → Él dijo _____ estaba aqui.
3. “We want that.” → Queremos _____.
4. I hope that she’s here. → Espero ______ esté aquí.
5. He said that that was impossible. → Dijo ____ ______ era imposible.
Answers:
1. Eso
2. que
3. eso
4. que
5. que eso
How’d you do?
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If you got any wrong, don’t worry — this is tricky at first, but here’s how you can make it much more natural very quickly.
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